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Frequently Asked Questions about the Route4U app

2016-10-052016-10-04 by tibor

What is Route4U?

Route4U is a community-contributed tool that helps You to navigate on the sidewalks of a city. The purpose of the application is to give you the highest possible level of freedom in mobility, whether you are in your hometown or out exploring a new city. In exchange You can also help the community in many ways. We have data available in every single city of the world.

How does it work?

First, download the iOS app here or the Android one here. Once you open the app, you’ll see a map with color coded information on it. These are
- Places – Points of Interests (circles),
- sidewalks and crossings (gray or coloured lines),
- and maybe obstacles (exclamation marks).
With Route4U, you can search for accessible places, and if there’s information available already, you can have personalized sidewalk routes planned between two locations.
You can also contribute:
- assess places’ accessibility,
- automatically map sidewalks and
- notify others about obstacles!
We also have a web based map, with limited functionality here.

What are the colours on the map?

We use colours on Places (or Points of Interest – POI), sidewalks and crossings.
Places can be gray, green, yellow and red.
- Green means the entrance is accessible with all kinds of wheelchairs.
- Yellow means entering is inconvenient but possible, either alone or with help.
- Red means “impossible” because of the characteristics of the entrance.
- Gray POI means insufficient data. But you can change that! 🙂

Sidewalks can be green, yellow, orange, red and gray. The colours show the smoothness and/or the steepness of the sidewalk surface.
- Orange is very inconvenient and
- red is impossible to roll on for most wheelchair users.
- Gray sidewalks are not yet mapped, but again, you can change that!
Crossings can also be green, yellow, orange, red and gray. Colours of crossings indicate their kerb height.
- You will definitely not have problems with green crossings, while
- red ones have at least 10 cm high kerbs.
Route4U’s Navigation function shows you personalized routes. You can set your accessibility preferences in the Settings.

Can I also change colour of Places or sidewalks?

Sure! By tapping any Place on the map, you see their accessibility info. If there is no information yet (it’s gray) or if you find it incorrect you can change it’s properties by tapping the pencil icon and set it according to your findings. You can also add text on relevant details at the bottom.

Please read our Assessment Guide to see what kind of toilets and entrances fit into which category. This way we can avoid false data appearing on the map. Don’t worry though! Sometimes it’s not easy to decide the colours. If you have doubts, just add some comments in the “Accessibility Details” box. See the guide here.

Every user can “survey” sidewalks, kerbs and preferred routes while they move around in the city. Tapping the ruler (survey button) – even if the area is already mapped – automatically helps the community by keeping the map data fresh and accurate. Same applies when using the app in navigation mode. During survey, Route4U collects sensor data of your phone, and turns it into accessibility maps. No data about our users or their routes is given to a third party. This automatic survey function works best when you roll on the sidewalks and crossings. Surveying while driving or sitting in the car collects false data – however our built-in artificial intelligence will filter these out. 🙂

What if the sidewalk would be fine, but is temporarily obstructed?

You can notify other users about that! Long tap on the map, choose “Obstacle“. You can even add a photo for others to see. These obstacles also count in the route planning process, if the sidewalk is blocked, Route4U will show you an alternative route.

Why does Route4U say “No route!” when I try to use the navigation function!

We can only show you accessible routes on the mapped areas. Route4U is a community based app, which means you and your friends can automatically map your city from zero, only by opening the app and tapping on the ruler icon. This way we receive sidewalk data that is turned into coloured sidewalk maps. If you are an active person from a not-yet mapped city, feel free to contact us at tibor@route4u.org and our cartographer will help you get things rolling.

Does Route4U follow me when I am not using the app?

Does Route4U use mobile data?

Yes, and GPS too.

Who can I contact if I have questions or something’s not working?

info@route4u.org or tibor@route4u.org

Oh, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook! 🙂

Live in Portsmouth? Come check this out! – Preliminary mapping of the Portsmouth pilot area has finished

2016-09-242016-09-23 by tibor

We collected sidewalk and crossing data on our trip to Portsmouth using the automatic survey funcion of the Route4U iOS application. We compared the result of this survey with open source data sets, and now released this preliminary sidewalk map of a pilot area in the centre of Portsmouth. We say it’s preliminary because only after Route4U users are actively contributing to the map, when all the shortcuts and personal routes are on it, we can say we’re ashore.

You are reading this because you are enthusiastic about wheelchair navigation, and you – as we do – actively work for a more convenient, more accessible world.

Before the October 1. start of our public test in Portsmouth, we would like YOU to check the map out, and give us feedback. We want to make sure it’s useful for locals and tourists alike. It looks like this now:

Check out the current status here. Right-click the map to plan an accessible route from A to B, or click on the grey circles (they are Points of Interest – POI) to view and assess their accessibility. You can also download the iOS app here, for more features and a much better user experience.

Please help us with these questions, let’s make sure everything is ready before setting sail:

Is there a pedestrian path connecting Anglesea Road and Guildhall Square? (behind King Henry Building and Park Building?) here: http://route4u.org/maps/#18.05/50.79791/-1.09389/0/1
Is the path from Guildhall Square to Victoria Park shown correctly on the map? here: http://route4u.org/maps/#18.08/50.79816/-1.09244/0/1
Surface smoothness of Commercial Road, do you agree it’s convenient “green”? here: http://route4u.org/maps/#18.73/50.80141/-1.08922/0/1
We love short routes! Do you? Are there any accessible arcades or other shortcuts that are not yet featured on the map of the surveyed area? See an example here: http://route4u.org/maps/#19.22/50.79659/-1.09253/0/1
You can show us your preferred routes (even if they’re not yet on the map) by tapping the “ruler” icon in the bottom left corner of the map in our iPhone app.
Have you encountered any map errors regarding sidewalk surfaces, crossings, curbs? You can pin them for review inside the app. Just make a long tap on the map and choose “Obstacle”. Please choose “Map improvement” and if you can, attach a photo of the problematic area by tapping the camera icon above the red face.

Since you’re definitely an early adopter,

Feel free to write a note in our mapping group about anything Route4U related, or send an email to our cartographer: tibor@route4u.org

If you feel like, you can start the public testing right away! By clicking on the grey circles on the map around you, you can assess their accessibility. The information becomes available to everyone in less then an hour! If you encounter any obstacles – temporary or permanent – why not put them on the map, as it is mentioned above? The Route4U route planner now takes this into consideration during sidewalk navigation!

You are amazing, thank You! 🙂

Oh and there’s more: during our campaign in October we’ll be solving a nice, online community puzzle game together. – Stay tuned!

Wheelchair sailing on lake Velencei in Hungary

2016-09-132016-09-13 by tibor

Last week team Route4U went sailing.

One of our friends told us about the wheelchair sailing opportunity at Agárd, on the shore of lake Velencei. They operate a Rehabilitation Centre at the lakeside where people can move in for a couple of months while they are learning to cope with challanges of their new life. The Centre is also next to a small harbor where residents can (and should!) try sailing.

How it works

With the help of the super friendly local staff, we prepared our boats, put them on water and got in. Zoltán, our teammate got in the boat with the help of a nifty crane next to the pier. All of us wore life jackets, and at least one person of the two in every boat had to know the basics of sailing.

As we were told it was nearly impossible to tip over with the boat but still, the author of these lines was not so sure about that when we tilted 45 degress multiple times 🙂

This is how it went, and this is how it looked:

Everything is given at Agárd what’s needed for a fun and exciting day with or without a wheelchair. Our goal with Route4U is the same. It’s easier to be active, when circumstances are optimal. And when they’re not, you need information to know how to bring the most out of the situation.

Found out more about Route4U here.

Our fast and cost-efficient accessibility mapping at Sziget Festival

2016-09-012016-08-31 by tibor

“Sziget” is held every August in Budapest, Hungary and it’s been voted best European Major Festival multiple times. The 25th Sziget attracted over half a million visitors from all over the world, a small percentage of them were wheelchair users or members of other disability groups. All the stages and venues, camping areas, bars and fast-food restaurants are located on an island of the river Danube, hence the name “sziget”, which translates to “island” in Hungarian.

Sziget accomodated an Ability Camping with big, cleaned-up camping spots, accessible toilets/showers and they had also built – together with the company of the same name – an “Ability Park” where abled and disabled festival-goers could walk in their peers’ boots by trying games, solving quizes, drawing, walking in a maze, climbing walls and cycling blindfolded.

Festival nights can be quite chaotic, where accidents happen 🙂 Everyone with broken, bruised limbs or other movement-impairing injuries ended up in the Ability Camping. These people, together with other wheelchair users, could use Route4U, our iOS smartphone application to search for and navigate to accessible venues, toilets and lookouts inside the festival’s huge area. They could use the app in Budapest, and also in their own cities, after arriving back home. Find out more about Route4U here.

Survey

The island is a recreational area throughout the year with patches of forest, muddy or gravel paths and lots of grass. Our first step was – since we use OSM data in our maps – to check and verify the already available path and sidewalk data of the island. After our field survey, surface smoothness data were added to the network. Just one day before Sziget opened, we surveyed the stages, art installations, food and drink places, and other venues. We even ventured to the Northern tip of the island, where people could swim in the Danube and enjoy the cool shades of the riverside forest.

All the Points of Interests (POI) in Route4U have an accessibility (entrance) and an accessible toilet attribute. We had only set these “green” on the venues without steps, and on the few accessible toilets and showers, to make sure our users find what they were looking for: accessible places in the festival area. All the “grey”, not yet verified POIs on our map are waiting for community feedback. After they are evaluated, they appear in the application with their new colour.

Even though the festival area is not yet connected to the Budapest Route4U sidewalk network, we surveyed routes from the festival entrance to low-floor public transportation stops.

Use and feedback

We reached our goal: Route4U was the best festival venue finder smartphone solution for Sziget 2016. After a rainy night some of our users even marked osbtacles, such as huge puddles or untraversable muddy spots. In these areas, our route planning function worked just fine, as the suggested route evaded the problematic areas.

We received some useful feedback too: for colourful events like music festivals, the map needs to be merrier too, especially our icons (POIs). Go ahead and download Route4U here, we have accessibility data available in your city too.

Sziget in pictures: